La Gaîté Lyrique, which opened its doors in spring, is many things. Behind its old façade you will find a cultural institution, a museum, a gallery, a screening room and video game area, all in a former 19th-century theatre located on the fringes of the Marais neighbourhood of Paris. And with its impres-sive space of 13,000 square metres, it demonstrates the importance of a house entirely dedicated to an art form that has been on the contemporary forefront in the recent years. Think of last year’s notable “Decode” exhibition at London’s prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum that showed interactive installations and beautiful visuals generated with code. But what exactly is this marriage of technology and art?

Digital art — or computer art — emerged in the mid-1960s with computer-generated patterns developed by scientists and engineers. It gained further popularity in the 1970s with the advent of the personal computer for everybody. As an art form it can consist of a drawing, motion graphics, an installation. It can come in the guise of virtual reality or Internet-based net art — basically anything that uses digital technology.

Matt Pyke of Sheffield-based design collective Universal Everything explains, “Digital technology is now integral to everyday life. We use it in our hands, our desks, our cars and in our houses. Today Digital Art does not feel distant, cold or inaccessible — it is now a canvas we are all familiar with.“ However, Jérôme Delormas, La Gaîté Lyrique’s artistic director, adds that while technology is shaping our life, “why and how we use technology is more important than technology itself.” And this is why the new museum is also all about digital culture, a modern lifestyle that fully embraces digital technology. The predecessors of this way of life were the video games and the Atari arcades of the 1980s. Creative outputs of today’s digital culture can be, for example, experimental music, VJ performances, 3D film or software code that is used to generate artful designs. Even Microsoft’s latest game controller Kinect, a controller that is entirely operated through gestures, can turn into an artistic medium when playfully hacked by programmers. Indeed, digital art emerges out of a technological playground. But whereas technology itself can be cold, the result is supposed to be fun! Matt Pyke says, “Screens are, for the moment, untouchable — but you can touch the viewer’s other senses and emotions through the content they display.“

For the museum’s opening Universal Everything developed several installations, and currently Matt’s works are on display in the “Matt Pyke & Friends: Super-Computer-Romantics” exhibition. Together with several collaborators he developed installations and projections with generative living sculptures that keep growing from code. Matt says about the techniques, “The artworks grew from research and development, production processes and bespoke tools such as generative design, supercomputer rendering (rendering of 3d objects with most power-ful workstations) and 3D printing we have developed through Universal Everything's commercial projects.” His approach is to design a fundamental concept and then collaborate with artists to use their collective energy for something new. A concept that defines today’s role of an artist turned into a designer and maybe even a pro-grammer. Jérôme Delormas of La Gaîté Lyrique explains, “We are in a networked society where creativity emerges out of a collaborative process. This is something new. Matt Pyke would be a very contemporary example for this method.”
To make this collaborative process more transparent, the museum hosts regular workshops. For example, soft-ware code is something quite abstract to grasp. To bring the actual act of coding closer, the institution is inviting hackers to weekly workshops. There they show and share what they are working on, anybody can attend and learn more about the topic. Jérôme Delormas explains, “Viewers don’t come to see a result, they come to partici-pate with the process.”

Workshops and the creative process are only one of the many possible ways digital art can be shown at La Gaîté Lyrique. The exhibition form itself is an experiment to be conducted every time. For that the museum invites visual artists for performances to create new exhibition forms. Jérôme Delormas says, “We want to explore a theme and we decide how it should appear to the audience. This can be an exhibition or a concert or just virtual resources on the Internet. It can be these three at the same time displaying the theme in different media. It can be visuals, music, films, radio, video games — we display more than we categorize.” For example, in summer the institution hosts a two-monthly event about skateboard culture which isn’t digital at all. It shows the surrounding aspects of skateboard culture, such as music, graffiti, graphic design or motion design. “It is something important coming from a new generation,” Jérôme explains the reason for the show. Interesting, indeed. We are very much looking forward what La Gaîté Lyrique will show us next, be it analogue or digital!

More information:
www.gaite-lyrique.net
www.universaleverything.com